Curriculum Night and Preschool

Last night was Curriculum Night at Julia's school, so I got a chance to visit her classroom and meet her second grade teacher.

The childrens' desks were adorned with a picture the kids had drawn and a sentence about their subject of expertise.  Here was Julia's:

"I am an expert at silent reading.  I've been reading sence I was in kindergarten!"

I've gotta say: Julia seems to have a much stronger grasp on her expert abilities than she did last year, when she contemplated writing her "How To" book on her proposed expertise of painting her nails.  She most definitely is an expert silent reader, and I'm glad she can recognize that!

In other school news, Madeleine FINALLY got to start back up at preschool today.  She was SO excited!:

Madeleine is now in the Dinosaur class, which is made up of the oldest preschool kids, those who are one year away from kindergarten.  After school, I asked her how it felt to be a Dino.

ME: Madeleine, how was Dinosaurs?
MADELEINE: Um, GREAT!
ME: So what was it like being a Dinosaur?  Do you get to do different things than you did in the other classes?
MADELEINE: (brightly) Yeah!
ME: Like what?
MADELEINE: Um...um...um...well Mama.  We didn't really do ANY different things.

Regardless of school being the same as it ever was, Madeleine seemed to have a fun first day.  And in what I view as a HUGE leap of progress, apparently when another kid accidentally rode his bike over her foot, she didn't even cry.  I will take any small steps towards reducing the number of daily school sob-fests that I can!

Unlike Julia, Madeleine didn't get to write about what she's an expert in, but she DID get to show off her expert drawing skills with this picture:

ME: Woah, Madeleine, what's this a picture of?
MADELEINE: Oh.  That's me and a SKELETON.
ME: That's a big skeleton.
MADELEINE: Yeah.  He's a GIANT skeleton.
ME: Is he mean?
MADELEINE: No!  He's nice.
ME: Oh.  So you're just hanging out with your skeleton friend?
MADELEINE: Yeah.  And Mama.  He likes to LOOK mean, but he's really nice.

Another thing Madeleine could claim to be an expert in: creepy randomness.  Or random creepiness.  Take your pick.